Dock stolen from camp at Ebeemee Pond

Ruth Witham, who owns the dock, has offered a $500 reward for the arrest and conviction of the person or people who took the vinyl and aluminum dock, which was on wheels.

“They knew what they were doing,” Witham said Thursday. “There was a washer on the ground, so I’m thinking they took it apart and put it onto something,” she said of the approximately 40-foot dock, which was located on Ebeemee Pond off Fire Road 2.

Ebeemee Pond is located in Unorganized Territory between Brownville and Millinocket.

Witham said she went to the landing Wednesday afternoon intending to boat across the pond to her camp to see what supplies she needed for the weekend. When she arrived, a neighboring camp owner came across the pond in his boat and asked why she had removed her dock.

“I didn’t even realize it was gone,” Witham said. “I looked and said, ‘Where is it?’”

The dock was there at 10 a.m. Wednesday when the neighbor left for a doctor’s appointment but was gone when the neighbor returned at 2 p.m., Witham learned. Her pontoon boat, which was on the shore by the dock, was left untouched, she said.

Another camp owner told Witham that the dock was not there at noon, so the theft occurred between 10 a.m. and noon, she said. A resident who lives on the main road near the entrance to the camp road told Witham on Wednesday that she saw two men sitting in a van in the gravel pit earlier that day, but didn’t see any vehicle leaving the area with a dock. The gravel pit is just a few yards from the camp road, according to Witham.

Witham figures those men must have served as lookouts while the dock was being disassembled. She said there is only one way in and out of the camp road.

“We just got the dock this year because we’ve been using an old one,” Witham said.

Witham said she contacted the Piscataquis County Sheriff’s Department and the attendants at the gates to Katahdin Iron Works and Jo-Mary Road in the belief that someone may have taken the dock to a camp in those areas. She also called Millinocket and Medway, where docks are sold, to let them know her dock had been sto-len. Other than that, she hopes anyone who may have seen anyone with a new dock in the region will call the Sheriff’s Department at 564-3304.